Survival By The Book: Identification of a Crisis

Welcome to the second episode of Survival By The Book, the podcast series where local librarians learn about how to prepare for emergency situations because being prepared shouldn't be complicated. 

What does it really mean to be prepared — not just for emergencies, but for uncertainty itself?

In this episode we continue our conversation on emergency preparedness by exploring the stages of a crisis and the critical difference between preparation and mitigation. Together, we unpack how emergencies unfold, how alerts and warnings are designed to keep communities informed, and why the choices we make before a disaster can shape how we recover afterward.

We talk about how to become "antifragile" and not simply survive difficult situations, but learn how preparation, adaptability, and community support can help people become more resilient through them. We learn that preparedness isn’t about fear — it’s about creating confidence, flexibility, and connection before crisis strikes.

Recommended readings and sources: 

Ready.gov/plan

NOAA, Watch Warning Advisory Explained, https://www.weather.gov/sjt/WatchWarningAdvisoryExplained

Alert Media, The 4 Stages of Crisis and How to Manage Them, https://www.alertmedia.com/blog/stages-of-crisis/

CAL OES News, Evacuation Warnings vs. Evacuation Orders, https://www.news.caloes.ca.gov/evacuation-warnings-vs-evacuation-orders/

Civil Air Patrol, Advanced Operational Risk Management, https://www.gocivilairpatrol.com/media/cms/Advanced_Risk_Management_Guide_b04e46226f614.pdf

Preparedness Now! by Edwards,Aton 

The Disaster-ready Home by Stewart, Creek

Created by the Podcast Team at the Harris County Public Library.
www.hcpl.net

Podcast Team Members include: Beth Krippel, John Harbaugh, Mary Mink, Dylan Smith, Sadina Shawver, Alinda Mac, John Schaffer, Jennifer Finch, Katelyn Helberg, Darcy Casavant, Darla Pruitt and Nancy Hu 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Have you always been curious about survivalism? Wanted to take a trip outdoors or into the wilderness, but didn't know what you need or how to prepare? Or maybe you're just someone who wants to be prepared for an emergency situation, but have no idea where to start. If any of these things sound like you, then you've come to the right place. Welcome to HCPL's new podcast, Survival by the Book.

SPEAKER_03 0:33

We're talking about emergency identification today, yes?

SPEAKER_00 0:37

Yes. So crisis happens in typically four different stages: pre-crisis, crisis response, and post-crisis. Today we'll be talking more about the like identification of a crisis. So that pre-crisis stage, which is mostly about preparation and mitigation.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Pre-crisis is just any like any random Tuesday, just any day before something happens. Correct. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:00

We are in a pre-crisis right now, are we not? At this moment.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Mentally, emotionally, spiritually.

SPEAKER_03 1:08

Yeah, correct.

SPEAKER_04 1:11

Always.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

Well, yes and no. Like right now, it's sunny outside. There's no immediate threat to life that we're aware of. We never know what's lurking off the coast.

SPEAKER_02 1:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

But so we wouldn't really be in a pre-crisis right now. So pre-crisis is more about communication and monitoring. So a lot of what happens is for the monitoring, especially in Houston, is weather-based events. So emergency alerts and warnings, things like that. Yeah, things where you want to stay tuned for X, Y, and Z. As Harris County employees, we're all part of a network that kind of like alerts us, hey, there's been a chemical spill over here. Or in some cases, like there's been a shooting at this location, don't show up, and things like that. So you've got your social crises and your weatherborne, like emergency crises. Keeping in in the ear to the ground, as they used to say, you know, being aware of news sources and alerts and things like that. Uh, since we're in Houston, weather alerts are typically the big thing that we're gonna pay attention to.

SPEAKER_01 2:22

I will say I do get a lot of those. I don't know if anyone what weather apps people use, but I like accu weather. That one's my favorite. And I don't want to shout you out too much accu weather. But they are constantly on my phone with different weather-related alerts from all over Texas.

SPEAKER_03 2:36

So Space City weather is it for me. That's that's the only source, really. And then I'll go to a different app for radar sometimes. But um, but then there's I I signed up for all kinds of text alerts through Ready Harris as well.

SPEAKER_02 2:50

I just have the one that came with my phone, which is not that accurate. So But I I look at the news and the weather every day. Like when I get to work, I'm like, oh, let's go and actually go to a source that I can trust. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Well, that's good. So all of you pretty much stay on top of, oh, there's going to be thunderstorms in two or three days, and things like that. When it comes to weather, NOAA is is, you know, our federal government. It's our, I mean, they've they're the one that has the huge radar. They're usually the one that I check when I'm checking the radar to find out what is coming in into our area. So there are three different words that they use when it comes to weather that you should be aware of. So there is watch, advisory, and warning. When it's a watch, it means that the weather condition is possible. So it may or may not happen, and we're keeping on top of watching it. Now, when there is an advisory, that's when it changes. It means that this weather is going to happen. So if there is a fog watch, that means fog could happen. But if there's a fog advisory, that means that fog will happen, but we're not exactly sure how bad the fog is going to be. And when they release a warning, that's when the condition will happen and the effects are expected to be hazardous. So, like a fog warning means that it's going to be dense fog that could affect traffic and pretty much your regular life. Now, we do get fog here pretty frequently. So I think we're okay about it. But a good example would be in Tennessee. There is this one, I remember this, this is years ago. Um, there was a 128-car pileup because of fog, because they had released a watch, an advisory, and a warning. And apparently it went really quick, uh, pretty much overnight. And so people were commuting and just one thing led to another, everyone just stacked up like cans. Took, I think, six hours to get everything cleared up.

SPEAKER_02 4:51

They always show us the analogy here that the tacos get the ingredients for the tacos. That's a watch. And then when it's a warning, tacos are being made, or taco has been made, rather. I guess advisory would be the tacos are gonna be made, but we don't know when or how big, maybe. They don't usually use the taco analogy for advisory. I'll have to come up with that.

SPEAKER_01 5:11

That's actually my first time hearing about a taco. I really haven't no, I haven't heard that before.

SPEAKER_02 5:16

So um famously they'll use it on the news, but there's always like a meme that goes around. I guess Facebook. I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

See, that's the perfect way I can explain it to my friends. Because, like I said, I always found it a little difficult because I would always end up inverting it, flipping it somehow in some way, then later on I'd be like, why did I say that? Oh my god, I'm giving them the wrong information. Now they're gonna be unprepared. But the taco analogy is perfect. So I'm glad to have that in my arsenal mode.

SPEAKER_02 5:41

Welcome. It's very Texan, I think.

unknown 5:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:43

So those are emergency alerts and warnings. So you'll also get like what Caitlin was saying. If like a plant has something go on where they're doing an emergency burn or chloride gas has been emitted or something like that, you usually from like ready.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

And just to be clear, because I have this again, first time I heard about ready.harris or ready.ready.gov that we mentioned in the first episode. You just go to the website and you can just sign up, putting your information, and then you'll be getting those alerts and everything like that.

SPEAKER_00 6:27

Or like like you said, Acuweather has alerts, and if you put the push notifications forward, it'll tell you, oh, there's a fog, dense fog advisory, or there's a hurricane coming, or tornado watch, or or or or with all of the different weather-related events. So you get an alert, it says, you know, X, Y, or Z. What do you guys do?

SPEAKER_01 6:49

I will say in my in my experiences, all my friends and anyone that is of a younger generation or anything like that typically just laugh at like a warning or watch. I'm like, what does it mean? Are they acting confused? Are they like, oh, it's nothing, you know, just push it off to the side. And I'm the one that's kind of like, guys, shouldn't we, shouldn't we, shouldn't we get in the bathtub or something? Shouldn't we get out of here? Shouldn't we get to a lower level? Like, why are you so casual about this? But this is where I guess personally, my own personal story comes in where I'm a little more hyper-vigilant about it. Was back in 2018, we had Hurricane Harvey come through. And I remember on my phone um getting, we ended up getting the tornado warning. And I remember seeing it on my phone and just kind of swiping up, but we had the hurricane going on, so I was just like, I can't go anywhere. I don't even know what this means. Like, you know, and just swiped it up, just stayed in my house because I'm not leaving in a hurricane. After all of that, in my back neighborhood, I realized how close it actually was. Cause then on my path I normally take to school and everything like that. I saw the literal indentions in the ground where all the soils pulled up from the tornado, and there was a wing stop in Pizza Hut that used to be back there that the building was basically completely destroyed. And at that point, I was just like, oh wait, that tornado was extremely close. And had it been any longer or anything like that, it could have very easily diverted course to where I was. And at that point, I became a little more hyper-vigilant about these watches and warnings.

SPEAKER_03 8:14

And I'm on like the complete opposite end of the spectrum. My favorite movie as a kid was Twister, 1996 version. Um twisters, no, not twisters, not plural, singular, twister, Helen Hunt, Bill Paxton. It was decent. And then also I grew up in Nebraska for my like middle school, high school years, where like during the month of May, a tornado warning or watch is a nightly occurrence. So like I just it was so normalized to the point where like some people would be in their basement. Like usually it was there was a divide in your family. For me, it was like my mom and my siblings would go to the basement every night. And then like me and my dad would like pull out lawn chairs and we'd be sitting on the driveway, you know, just looking at the clouds. Like, and that was nor that was normal. You know, we weren't the only ones. So yeah, I don't take at least then I didn't take tornado warnings or watches super seriously. When they happen here, it's not as common. So I do take it a little more seriously, but I, you know, I look at the radar and track it obsessively and you know make your own decisions. Correct, make my own decisions accordingly.

SPEAKER_02 9:22

I'm I feel like I'm kind of funny because I grew up here, so obviously I've dealt with hurricanes, and anytime they say one's coming, I'm like, we're gonna take this seriously because sometimes they're really bad. And it's true, like there was like what hurricane Ben, something that started with a B, and like nothing happened. People were at the moment and they'd been telling us it was gonna be a big deal, and so then everybody is kind of like they always blow it out of proportion, you don't actually have to take it that seriously. But they did that with Harvey, because as I said before, I worked at a grocery store, and there were people who were like, everybody's panicking for no reason, it's gonna blow over. And then obviously Harvey did not blow over, very famously did not.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

How to create the category of black for more rain than they had on the current gauge to for the the per hour.

unknown 10:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:12

Growing up in California, like if it ain't above a 4.0 earthquake, I'm not what I'm not, I'm all I'm gonna do is roll over in bed. It's not worth waking up for.

SPEAKER_02 10:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:23

Northridge hitting was was a big deal. That was big because you have earthquakes that roll and earthquakes that jump. And so it's like one's on an x-axis, one's on a y-axis type of deal, except that Northridge was both at the same time. And so what it did was it caused shearing. So instead of like having the flexibility of a wave, it was it was um going up and like the two directions were going at the same time, causing shearing, which is why a lot of freeway collapses and things like that, because they weren't designed for shearing, they were designed for riding a wave one direction or the other. And so then there's emergencies like that where you just need like general preparation. But yeah, that that one was really bad. So there are sometimes some like the Derecho just was just kind of like there's gonna be a weather event, and we don't exactly know what. And then it happened. Um, and then, but like earthquakes seem so random. It's not like you get an earthquake warning.

SPEAKER_04 11:27

Right.

SPEAKER_00 11:28

We're on an earthquake watch. No, we're constantly on an earthquake watch. That's interesting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:32

And there's I never thought about that, but that I mean, that makes total sense.

SPEAKER_00 11:36

Well, yeah, and you think about other locations like Japan or anywhere around the Pacific Rim, where you know, you could get a 9.7 earthquake, and you have to have buildings that are built for that. I mean, Taipei 101 literally has a spine inside of it to absorb the earthquake damage.

SPEAKER_03 11:56

Oh, the the disasters I'm most scared of are the ones I have no experience with. So, like earthquake, I have no experience with, but wildfires in particular, no experience. And they that terrifies me.

SPEAKER_00 12:06

Wildfires are terrifying. Yeah. Um, before I left from California to Houston, there was the the hill in front of my house burnt up. So a good example of between watch advisory and warning is when it comes to fire. Especially I mean, because like during the summer months, like they're constantly on fire watch. That's why national parks have fire towers to make sure that these things are spotted. Now we had the uh kind of dovetails into what we're talking about, which was evacuation. So uh California OES Office of Emergency uh services, like has two definitions for an evacuation warning or a mandatory evacuation/slash evacuation order. So a warning is an evacuation warning means that there's a potential threat to life or property. While it's not mandatory, it is important to pay attention and prepare to leave. Get all your stuff, put it in your car, all your photo albums, everything that's important, insurance documentation, birth certificates, all that stuff. Get it in your car in case you need to leave. A mandatory evacuation order is an evacuation order that is an immediate threat to life and property. This is not the time to wait or assume that danger will pass. Leave now. The earlier you leave, the easier it will be to navigate the affected area and avoid traffic congestion. An evacuation order is a lawful directive to leave the affected area, which is now closed to the public. So most evacuation orders are signed by a judge. Yeah, you're you are getting kicked out because you will have severe consequences for staying. Good example of this is recently with the Altadena fire. Now, one of my friends who I used to work for actually had his house burned down. So they got an evacuation warning, and three hours later, it was a mandatory evacuation order where the police were out there, you know, loudspeakers telling people get out, get out, get out, get out, get out. Three three hours later, his house was burnt down. So within six hours, there was a warning, an evacuation order, and the disaster had our already happened. So fires, fires are nothing to be dragging your feet on.

unknown 14:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:22

Scary stuff, right?

SPEAKER_03 14:23

Yeah. We have a very complicated history of like evacuation here in Houston, though. Yeah. Which which hurricane was it? Like Rita.

SPEAKER_02 14:32

Rita. Yeah. Because it was right after Katrina. So then everybody there was a level of a little bit of panic, I think. But yeah, it was really bad. People died on the freeway. I think that's also why now when we're told, because then Rita didn't even hit us. It like veered and hit like Beaumont, maybe. Um, I think I'm totally wrong about that. But it didn't even hit Houston. And so I think that does feed into why when we have hurricane warnings here, people are like, I'm not, I'm not leaving. It's gonna be fine. They're not saying anything.

SPEAKER_00 15:06

Well, there's a whole generation of people who just want to hunker down because they think that it's better to weather the storm than it is to get out of Dodge. And in some situations, yeah, like that's fine. But other times, uh-uh. Like if it's a category one, I understand, especially if it's a soaker, not a ripper. But if it's a category three, four, five ripper, like you got to get out of there. That's the type of stuff that hits Florida where you see like the houses melt off the coast and things like that. No, you gotta get out of there. So when it comes to shelter, it sounds like most of us have hunkered down, unless, you know, like in my situation, where I watched a the literal side of the hill burn to a crisp, uh, including all of the wonderful like weather that goes with a, you know, the this weird wind that like rolls with it. It's it's crazy. Being inside of a wild right or right next to a wildfire is absolutely crazy. If you can't stay home, where where would you guys go?

SPEAKER_01 16:08

You know, that's a great question. Just because in my relative experiences, we basically just moved between the two two or three houses that we had. So, like where when we grew up, we were in Missouri City, and then when Harvey happened, my stepdad basically made my mom pack us up and then move us back to the house that I'm in today. And then that's where we spent the rest of Harvey. And my mom was just like, Oh, I know all the back roads to vote to avoid, all the roads that were flooded over, and so we luckily didn't see any water on the drive in, but that's basically what we did.

SPEAKER_02 16:37

We before, like during the Derecho, because we lost power then too. We went to my in-laws, but they have moved out of state. So now if something happens, I have to stay.

SPEAKER_03 16:51

Yeah, I've got I've got levels. So, like so I live in a northern suburb of Houston. It's not I don't it would take a huge hurricane for me to have to evacuate. But if I were, I would go to my uncle's house in Chapel Hill for a more local situation, like where I don't have power, my parents have a generator, so they're a little closer, they're in Conroe. If we're talking like wide scale, like I really need to get out, then I have family in Nebraska and some land up there, and we're going to Nebraska. Um, so yeah, I've got I've got levels of just varying degrees. How far north do I need to go for this?

SPEAKER_00 17:28

For the survival land in Nebraska that's okay. Build your off-grid compound.

SPEAKER_02 17:34

Yeah, that's the plan. I mean, um, my husband has some very dear friends from high school who have now moved to Oregon and they have property and they grow a bunch of the food that they eat. They also famously hunt. We don't really hunt. Uh it's not really what I would prefer to do personally, but you know, if you gotta survive, you gotta survive. And he's always like, if something goes bad in a big way, we're going up and living up there. That's a long drive, but we'll we'll do it. That's fine.

SPEAKER_00 18:08

I don't have many options. All my family's in California, so I don't have like the family, the uncle, the this, the that. So basically we'd we'd probably have to get out of Dodge and go to like a hotel or something. Um, you know, Red Cross has shelters and things like that. You if you have pets, you need to make sure that they accept the pets if they need to be in carriers or things like that, leashed or unleashed or what have you. Um if you've got kids, you need to make sure that they've got the accommodation for families and things like that. There's hotels, there's all sorts of different options like that where you can temporarily, because I remember when Harvey happened, like there were people who were driving up to Oklahoma.

SPEAKER_02 18:56

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:57

So they just beelined it up to either Dallas or Oklahoma, treated it kind of as like a mini vacation, and then like we'll see what happens when we come back to our house. So when it comes to emergencies, who are you telling what to? What is your communication plan? Because technically, according to ready.gov, for a communication plan, you're supposed to have like you know, your contact information. People know your phone number, like written phone number, not just like saved in a phone. I I keep a written like book of people's phone numbers. My brother has had his number crossed out like 15 times because he keeps on switching his number uh anytime he gets a new phone. Um so I have a written book of community like this, this, these people, here are their emails, here are their here's their addresses. And it also comes in handy when it comes to Christmas cards. Well, that's me. You have your out of state contact, which is easy for me because my out-of-state contact is my parents.

SPEAKER_02 20:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:09

Uh modes of communication, like what how many different modes of communication do you have? Do you just have your phone?

SPEAKER_01 20:17

Yeah. Like, I mean, the App Watch comes with the handy dandy walkie-talkie feature. If you're within a certain amount of distance from each other, that kind of works here and there.

SPEAKER_02 20:28

I don't know how far it reaches, but if you and the other person have it charged. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:34

Well, and if you're on Wi-Fi, yeah, that's true. You know what? I didn't think about that.

SPEAKER_00 20:38

Yeah, because it's tethered to your phone. That's how it transmits the signal.

SPEAKER_02 20:41

There's two-way radio, citizen band, radio citizen band, that's it.

SPEAKER_00 20:45

So two-way radio is walkie-talkie. Citizen band is basically like you can have a base station and stuff like that, but you don't need a license to operate it.

SPEAKER_01 20:53

But the phone book idea, I will say, with the written numbers, is so I've never thought about that. And you know, writing things when I have a notebook on my phone, it's so archaic.

SPEAKER_04 21:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:03

But sometimes you need print. Well, what do we what do we deal in? Print. Yeah. Lots of print. With a constant 3% every year increase in print circulation, print is not dead.

SPEAKER_03 21:17

The method of communication question though is really it's really getting to me though, because like because you were talking about like the 5G, and like if all we have is a cell phone or email, Wi-Fi goes down, 5G goes down, what like what would I do? I don't know. Well, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:34

And it it depends. The the protocols that I follow from like that I've had communication training on, because I'm also a mission radio operator for civil air patrol. And one of the things is that you only have your phone on for the first 15 minutes of the hour by doing that. So instead of trying to constantly check things, you need to number one breathe, don't panic, and then create a schedule that says I will only have. My phone on for the first 15 minutes at the top of the hour. In the situation that we were in, there was very little signal. Now, what you could send out was SMS text messages because that's just that's just data packets. Instead of it being a large stream of information, it's just data packets. So that's basically how I was able to go back and forth with my family, mostly my sister, because my mom never has her phone on her. Then there's also like a lot, you know, there's emergency flags where you put them out on the ground so that air crews, like say you are on the top of, you know, Katrina type situation, you're on top of the roof and the water is still coming, and you have an orange flag, that basically means rescue me. So there are a lot of different modes of communication. You just kind, again, have to be prepared. And the redundancy aspect of things.

SPEAKER_01 22:54

For people who listen to this and aren't prepared or might not know where to get an orange flag or anything like that. One, where would you purchase an orange flag, an orange flag? Because in my head, I'm thinking Academy or something like that. Or I'm just thinking with any orange piece of material work, like we stuck.

SPEAKER_00 23:10

Yes, just I mean, generally anything that you you can spell SOS out on. So yeah, it could you could just, I mean, if you search orange tarp on like Home Depot, I'm pretty sure. Or like something like that. So it's it's you know, writing SOS or help, anything like that to say, you know, come get me. Like that's what people need to do. Um, so yeah, I mean, the orange flag thing is mostly you're in the middle of a field and you know, you you've been lost in the woods or something like that. Again, that's preparation over mitigation. There's also mitigation. So in pre-crisis, there's preparation and mitigation. Mitigation is basically making those choices so that you don't have a bad time. So you make a bad choice, which leads you to have to make a worse choice, which makes you have to make the worst choice, which makes you have to make a worst disturb choice. And then you're in a real emergency.

SPEAKER_02 24:13

I think having a plan is also smart because then you know exactly what to do and you don't waste time being like, what are we gonna do? Let's figure it out.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

You know, yeah, no, no figuring it out. We're gonna do X, yeah, worst to stir. Yeah, worst disturb.

SPEAKER_03 24:27

Are we talking about a sauce?

SPEAKER_00 24:29

No, which I mean.

unknown 24:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:34

So in Civil Air Patrol, we have this thing called operation risk management. Um, it's not exclusive to Civil Air Patrol. There are tons of places that do it. If you look up operational risk management and just hit like images, you'll get a ton of stuff. So it's not just CAP who uses this, but ORM is a structured six-step process designed to identify, assess, and mitigate risks while improving mission performance. So the first stage is identifying hazards, then it is assessing risks, developing controls and making decisions, implementing controls, supervising and evaluating. The sixth step is going back to the beginning of identifying hazards. Whenever I planned a civil air patrol event, we would have to do this. There's a there's a whole grid that you work off of. So the first thing, especially in California and Texas, is water. If you don't have water, it is a high risk and it's possibly catastrophic. So there's you know, low, medium, high in risk, and then there's how severe is the the actual like damage? Is it negligible or is it a sliding scale up to catastrophic? I've been doing this so long that it's ingrained in the way that I plan things. Um, and that includes like children's programs when I was a children's librarian. Um, so where like my former boss would be like, Hey, why don't we do this? I'm like, okay, we could do this, but we need to do this, this, this, and this to mitigate any risk of safety and damage. You put in this risk management framework, the identifying the hazards. You know, do we take this road or that road? What are the hazards? This road's bigger, but that means more traffic. This road's smaller, but that means possible flooding and unknown conditions, assessing the risks and then developing controls and making decisions. Well, if there is traffic, we will do this designated route instead. Or instead of taking the small car, we'll take the truck instead that has a higher clearance in case we do come over water or what have you. Uh, implementing controls, things like that. If if the water is too high, we will turn around and not drown, things like that. Supervise and evaluate. You know, you're going down the road, and you know, the water's not too bad. There's a dip in the road, but you know from experience, because you've been down that road 13 million times, that the dip in the road is only about eight inches and your clearance is 12. So then you are supervising and evaluating. Then you get into a different part of the road where part of the road is missing and you don't know how deep that water is. So you decide to turn around, not your own.

SPEAKER_01 27:14

Exactly. And like I say, I like having this framework just because again, this is not before coming to this podcast, this is not something I've relatively heard about or anything like that. But it is something that upon hearing, it's stuff that you kind of practice or can practice in your everyday life. Like again, like when I talk to my partner just about certain, I don't know, I don't know if it's just me, but sometimes or when I talk to her about like certain dreams that I have, sometimes I have very violent dreams. And so I'm like, well, if this did happen, like what would we do? What would we how we react? And stuff like that, and just kind of just planning it out. And in my head, I'm like, that's not survival preparedness, that's not prepping for anything, but it can be in a way if you frame it within this visualization, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:53

Get ready, mentally prepared.

SPEAKER_03 27:57

So, okay, so I'm a Enneagram 6. If anyone is into Enneagram, like, so I think there's there's there's an extent to which I do this in my head all the time as well, constantly, but seeing it on paper really stresses me out because I can't like how could I possibly know all of the risks?

SPEAKER_00 28:15

Good segue into the next one. I wasn't even trying that time. So there's a book called Anti-Fragile by uh Nicholas Nassam Talib. It's really, really good. He also wrote uh Fooled by Randomness and Black Swan. And in his book, Anti-Fragile, he's one of the things that he brought up is that he went around to all sorts of different conferences and things like that. And so all the economists were like, you're a charlatan, we hate you, because he's basically saying you're not mitigating risk in a way which is productive and like real-world applicable. You're just looking at Gaussian bell curves and trying to make everything fit a average, when in reality we have these events that happen, which he calls black swans, which we can sometimes see and sometimes not. Good example would be like the pandemic. Was the pandemic a black swan? Like for some people, it came out of left field. So to them, it was a black swan. For someone like me that was paying attention six months before it actually broke big, it wasn't as much of a black swan because I was watching it with experience from H1N1 and from the swine flu. But he he went to a conference that was mostly military and government officials, you know, people in charge of all sorts of emergency situations. And he pretty much, they all they were all nodding their hands, their heads, and taking notes and being like, okay. And he said they were the most reasonable people, these people that deal with emergency situations because they understand that preparation and training trumps anything. And that's where having something like the operational risk management framework comes in, because it's about preparation and training, about being anti-fragile, about being able to be flexible to respond over just being having a rigid framework.

SPEAKER_04 30:18

Okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 30:19

It's the reason why the the Allies won World War II versus the Axis powers.

SPEAKER_01 30:26

Well, guys, now that we learned how to identify a crisis and the things we need to think about in order to prep for one, it's time to talk about actual survival situations. In the next episode, we'll be going over common short-term survival situations that we face here in Harris County, as well as going over the 10 essential items that you need to have in your home in order to prepare for them. But until then, this has been Survival by the Book, and we'll see you guys in the next episode.